I say you have to be so good and so compelling that when one of your followers goes out to drinks with their friends, they're talking about you. They're saying, “You have to follow this person, they're amazing."

If you don't think that is happening, if you don't think your followers are literally walking around evangelizing you then I think it's going to be very hard for you to gain a following because hashtags aren't working. People tagging you, that's not working. None of this growth hack stuff is working anymore. Giveaways are not a real way to grow a following. All of this isn’t really happening. Fohr just got tagged four or five times. We were reading Carolina Herrera's stories today, 3 million followers, we’ll probably get 10 followers from that.

That three years ago would have been massive. You would have gotten a huge spike in following. That just isn't the case anymore. Ask yourself the honest question, "Do I think that when my followers go out and have drinks with their friends they're telling their friends that they need to follow me?" Think about what would it take for one of your followers to do that. You would have to be so good, you would have to be providing advice at a level that people were feeling compelled to say, "You're doing yourself a disservice but not following this person." If you don't think you're getting that, you're in trouble.

Is it possible to make it if you were not unique and interesting and different and have a point of view? No, it's not possible. Is it possible to make it with 10K if you are copying what other big influencers are doing? No, I don't think it's possible. There is always room for something new. There is always a place for an extraordinary personality. There's always a place for people that have vision that is different than other people's psyche.

Yes, these platforms have gotten more competitive and yes, they've gotten more saturated but there's also so many more people using it. It's now over a billion people a month that are using Instagram. Capturing 100,000 of those people's attention isn't crazy. It can be done. There are new people joining Instagram all the time. There are new people signing back in and using it again all the time. You just have to have a different point of view.

Something else that is interesting is that on the whole, we are seeing bigger influencers losing their following month over month. I'd say over 100K. It's like 40% of influencers over 100,000 followers month over month are losing following. That number for micro influencers is 25%. Twice as many influencers over 100K are losing their following than in the micro influencers space. Micro influencers are gaining followers at a faster rate than any other type of influencer. It is possible but it goes back to what we said many times. You have to be interesting. You have to have a point of view. You have to have a point of differentiation or why would people follow you?

Something to look at as well is that conversion percentage number. If we're talking about Instagram business study, you can go to your insights page on Fohr, if you have that-

- or go to your business insights on Instagram. Look at how many new followers you're getting, and look at your profile views and divide that, and see how many profile views are you getting a day, and how many of those profile views are converting to new followers. If it looks like your conversion is low, say less than 2%, then tweak some stuff up, change your feed, do some different things, try and get that number up. It's definitely possible but it's definitely hard.

*How was I supposed to change in the past year if I asked this question a year ago?*

I think a year ago, I would have said it's much more possible, I think it's much, much harder now. I think that influencers have been such a big part of the national conversation, and marketing, and digital, and content, and social for the last year and a half. They are only getting more powerful but people are just getting a little sick of the conversation and I don't think they're going out there looking actively for new influencers to follow. You have to be so good that-- it's like that Jack Nicholson-- is that Jack Nicholson quote, “Be so good that they can't ignore you?” I don't know whose quote that is, “Be so good that they can't ignore you,” but that is the mentality.